


Lifeguarding(F1 version)

by AngelinaZebi



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Lifeguards, Conversations, M/M, Memories, Summer Vacation, Texting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 06:46:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19740379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelinaZebi/pseuds/AngelinaZebi
Summary: For a friend,If you've ever dreamed of saving young perosn's life, they'll enjoy this one ;) and if you haven’t, well, hopefully you’ll think it’s cute!





	Lifeguarding(F1 version)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LittleRookie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRookie/gifts).



It’s Lance's first day of real lifeguarding. He has done plenty of practice CPR and fake resuscitation, and spent hours (okay, minutes maybe) studying for that last test. Now, after all that preparation, he's up in his super high lifeguard chair, prepared to save real lives. Like, real-life lives. For real. Wow, how exciting!  
  
Yeah, right. Hours have passed, and there have been no near drownings, no lives saved, nothing except a couple of rowdy kids he had the privilege of blowing his whistle at.   
  
He sighs and shifts in his seat, uncomfortable in the extreme heat. It’s a summer weekend, so the pool is pretty crowded. So far he has noticed a few people here and there that he knows from school, and he hopes they haven’t recognized him. Sure, he's feeling pretty cool in his shades and his high chair and red swim shorts, but none of that makes it any less awkward seeing people he knows in public. Actually, the high chair makes it worse, since he feels more like a helpless baby than a guardian of lives. It doesn’t help that he's hardly more than 6 feet tall.

Well, it looks like the kids are doing a good job of staying alive so far. He allows his attention to drift a little, tuning out the hum of swimming children and crying babies. He starts to daydream, and his mind jumps to the same brown-haired, brown-eyed face it always does. His beautiful, adorable, sexyasfuck crush: Esteban Ocon.  
  
He heard of people being best friends with their crushes, but he didn’t really understand the concept or even think it was possible until Esteban came along. He’d talked to him once in person, and after that, he started texting. And then he just continued to text. Pretty much nonstop from that point on. As much as he's tried to deny it,he's been developing feelings for him that go farther than just friendship. He insists to his friends that he doesn’t like him like that. But he also texts them daily screenshots of his conversations or cute pictures of him, and spam his group chats with rants about how cute he is or in-depth analyses of the possible subtext in his messages.

Anyway, he goes to different schools during the school year, so he hasn’t even seen him in person since that first time he talked. The friendship has unraveled entirely over text. He's been secretly dying to hang out, and he’s suggested it himself a few times. But somehow he's never managed to actually make plans. That’s what he gets when he put two apathetic people together.  
  
He's dreamily picturing his cute smile and teasing eyes, immersing himself in his fantasies, when raucous laughter and whoops nearby interrupt his reverie. He sits up and look down towards the source of the noise. A group of teenage boys is running past his chair, emitting the unnecessarily loud noises typical of their kind. He considers letting them off easy, but the troublemaking has been low and he feels the need to blow his whistle at some point. So he does so now. “Hey!” he shouts to get their attention. “No running. Thanks.” A polite touch always helps, right? It’s probably sarcastic, but whatever. Boys are stupid, they can’t tell.  
  
The boys are laughing and punching each other now, but they slow down, thankfully. One of them has stopped moving completely, and turns around to look up at Lance, shading his eyes. He looks familiar. He takes his sunglasses off to see better and gasp. His eyes widen and his heartbeat quickens. “Esteban?”

The brown eyes looking back at you widen too. “Lance?” he responds, matching his incredulous tone. For a second, he stares at each other. Then he breaks into a grin. “Fancy meeting you here!”

  
He finally gets over the initial shock, and laughs awkwardly. “Wow, um, hey! I guess this is as good a time as any to finally meet in person,” he says, immediately regretting it. Now he probably thinks he's just been dying to see him this whole time, which of course is completely true.  
  
His friends have stopped too now, and are snickering obnoxiously. One of them nudges him. “Is this Lance?” he says, teasingly. Or maybe he's just imagining it because he wants his friends to be teasing him about him.  
  
“Shut up, Dorian,” he mutters to his friend. More snickering. He turns back to him. “Uh, Lance, these are my annoying friends. That’s all the introduction you get,” he adds to the giggling apes behind him.  
  
Lance waves. “Hey, annoying friends. Nice to meet you.” He tries to sound sincere. The sarcasm is present in his voice almost 24/7 at this point.

“Hey Lance!” another boy yells back, louder than necessary. They all laugh. Dorian nudges Esteban again and says, “Dude, he’s cute!” He smirks suggestively.  
  
Esteban’s face is a little pink now, though maybe he’s just been getting some sun lately and Lance didn’t notice before. “Okay dumbasses, let’s go swimming,” he announces, taking a running leap into the water without further hesitation.  
  
His posse waves to him, chorusing, “Bye, Lance!” and chortling at their own cleverness before jumping in after him, splashing some kids by the edge of the pool.  
  
Lance leans back again, but he stays very much awake now, still taking in what just happened. He follow Esteban with his eyes as he thinks and, as always, overanalyze.  
  
His first thought is: he tells his friends about him? They obviously knew who he was, and they were definitely teasing him about Lance. That’s promising, right? It means that either they see him texting Lance all the time, or he talks about Lance to his friends. Lance wonder what he could be saying.

He realizes he's lost sight of Esteban at about the same time he notices some boys roughhousing in the water a little ways off. He looks a little more closely. Big surprise, it’s Esteban’s friends. He tries to find Esteban among them, but they’re moving around too much. Someone is doing an awful lot of splashing. He watches for a little longer, and realize they’re climbing on top of each other, holding each other underwater. Idiots. He blows his whistle and yell at them.  
  
They look up, some grinning and waving when they see Lance. He looks for Esteban again, but Lance still don’t see him. Then he notices a figure underwater at their feet. He gets a sinking feeling, and his skin is suddenly cold even in the heat.   
  
“Guys!” he yells at them. “Is he okay?” He tries to point at the boy underwater. They figure it out and look down, realization slowly showing on their dumb faces. One dives down and comes back up a moment later, pulling a boy to the surface. His eyes are closed. Lance's heart skips a beat. It’s Esteban. 

Before you realize what he's doing, he's diving off his chair into the pool, bumping his fingers painfully on the ground of the shallow end. He barely notices, swimming as quickly as he can towards Esteban. Lance reached him in seconds. He is surrounded by his friends now, who are slapping his face, yelling at him, screaming in terror, and generally being a nuisance.   
  
“Out of my way!” he barks. They don’t pay any attention. “MOVE!” he bellows. They scatter.   
Lance grabs Esteban. His eyes are still closed and he isn’t moving. Oh God, oh God. He forced himself to focus, and hold him above the surface, bringing him to the edge of the pool like he learned during training. At this point another lifeguard is supposed to bring a backboard so Lance can pull him out together, but if someone is doing that they’re taking too long. It feels as though every second he wastes is taking him further away from him. He tries to lift his body onto the cement, but it’s too heavy. A yell of frustration escapes him. His friends clump around him, helping Lance hoist him up.   
  
He pulls himself out after him. There’s no time to thank them for the help. Now they’re crowding around again. Lance flaps his hand at them, trying to tell them to move away and give him space. He kneels beside Esteban, looking into his still, pale face. Tears are forming uninvited at the corners of his eyes, but he brush them away. Focus.   
  
He check for breathing or a pulse. Neither is present. He’s as good as dead right now, and he’ll die if he doesn’t do anything. Talk about stakes. 

His hands are trembling as he place them on his chest. The proper rate of chest compressions is about 100 beats per minute. He remembers seeing that the Queen song Another One Bites The Dust is at that tempo. He found the irony quite funny before. Now, it’s disconcerting. Still, he recalls the song and start pushing his hands down at about that tempo. One, two, three, four…he counts to 30. Then he puts two fingers on his chin and tilt his head backwards.   
  
He hesitates a moment before he leans down and put his mouth on his. Despite the urgency of the situation, he can’t help but briefly note that you are in fact putting his mouth on Esteban Ocon’s mouth. For the first time. If only it were under different circumstances. Happier, more romantic circumstances. Preferably not life or death.   
  
But he can’t let his emotions distract him. He give him two breaths, then pull back to listen for breathing. Still nothing. He tells himself not to freak out yet. Hands back on his chest. One, two, three, four, all the way up to 30. No emotions, no feelings. Just go through the motions. Just save his life.   
  
He puts his mouth back on his, feeling his cold lips against his. If the situation weren’t so dire, his sarcastic inner voice would be wryly commenting, Oh yay, their second kiss!

He breathe into his mouth again. Once, twice. And then, just as he lift his head, the still body beneath he suddenly comes alive, gasping for breath, coughing his lungs out. Well, not literally. His lungs stay inside him, thank God. He won’t be dying today.   
  
He gasp along with him, realizing then that he was holding his breath too. Almost as if out of sympathy. Esteban opens his eyes, and Lance lets his head fall onto his chest, breathing in deeply, trying to calm himself down while relief crashes over him like a wave.

  
Esteban sits up abruptly, forcing Lance to lift his head. He puts a hand on his back to hold him up, terrified that he’ll fall back down and never wake up.   
  
He realizes people all around him are cheering. He hasn’t had time to notice, but a huge crowd has gathered around the two of them. Right now though, they’re irrelevant. Lance turns back to Esteban. “You okay?” he ask him anxiously.   
  
He looks back at Lance with those beautiful brown eyes, vaguely confused. He seems to be trying to process everything. “What just happened?”  
  
“You almost drowned,” Lance tell him. Why sugarcoat it? “You were dead for like two minutes,” he adds, because it sounds awesome and hardcore and he knows he’ll appreciate it.   
  
He looks at him, differently now. “Did you just…save my life?”  
  
He breaks into a smile, surprising himself. It’s a funny feeling after the stress he's just been through. “Yup. You can thank me later.”  
  
“I’ll thank you now, if you don’t mind,” he responds, and takes his face in his hands and kisses Lance.   
  
His eyes widen at first, but then close of their own volition, and he just go with it. His lips are warmer now, and more importantly, they’re alive, moving against his. It’s better than he could ever have imagined.   
  
The cheers around him get louder, with some wolf whistles mixed in. Lance hear some kid shout “Yeah Esteban!” He’d momentarily forgotten he has an audience. He breaks away, laughing a little. “I should probably let you breathe. Wouldn’t want to kill you after just bringing you back to life,” he jokes.   
  
Esteban grins, and he is reminded of how freaking cute his smile is. “Funny, I’ve pictured our first kiss plenty of times and in plenty of different settings, but this is not quite what I had in mind.”  
  
“Technically, that one was our third,” he points out, and he laughs with him.   
  
“Wait, did you say you pictured it lots of-” he starts, but he stops him. “Yeah, this also wasn’t where I planned to tell you I’ve liked you for months now, but I think you might have figured that out by now.”  
  
Lance lets that sink in, and he physically can’t keep the smile off his face. Esteban’s friends pick that moment to cluster around and shower him with excited comments, questions, jokes and probably some tears. He doesn’t stop looking at him, though.   
  
Once they’ve talked at him for maybe a minute, they seem to remember he's there, and get the idea, moving away to give him space. The other people at the pool are dispersing too, buzzing excitedly.   
  
“Can you stand?” he asks. He nods. “I think so.” he get to his feet and help him up. Various adults are rushing over now, including people dressed in EMT uniforms. Esteban brushes them away, dismissing their concerns. “I’m fine.”  
He walk towards the exit with Lance's arm around his waist, supporting him. he passes his manager. “Hey, mind if I leave for a bit? Gotta make sure he stays alive, you know?”  
  
His manager nods and smiles at him. “Good first day on the job, Lance,” he says. “Take the rest of the day off. But come back tomorrow. We’ll need you if anyone else decides to drown themselves.” He laughs good-naturedly and gestures to Esteban.   
  
Esteban laughs too and leans his head on his, which is easy considering the four inch height difference. Lance lead him through the gates. “Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoy <3 :)


End file.
